60i-24p: Is there a better way?

hall_e wrote on 8/8/2004, 7:39 PM

OK, I'm sure this has been posted many times, but I have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the look of 60i footage that Vegas "blends" to 24p. When I used the blend option, the motion is too blurred; when I interpolate the fields, its jumpy and unnatural. I've tried everything I can think of; forced resample, no resample (which obvious wouldn't work at all), slowing down the footage and then speeding it back up, etc. In the end, I get the same or worse results. I know about DVFilmmaker, but just don't have any money right now to buy it. Is there ANYTHING else, any other settings, that Vegas might have (or free plugins you might know of) to get crisp, sharp 24p video? It's probably impossible, but just thought I'd ask.

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 8/8/2004, 8:49 PM

First of all, you're going from a temporal resolution of 60 images per second to 24 images per second. Naturally it's going to look "jerky" particularly on fast pans or scenes with a lot of motion. There is no "free lunch" with 24p. Read my post on the subject HERE.

Anyway, the full-up version of "Magic Bullet" when used in Adobe After Effects does a very good job of converting 60i to 24p. (If that's what you really want to do.) Of course, this costs money, of which you specifically said you have very little. You could, however, use Satish's WAX plugin for Vegas and this will allow you to use some of the adaptive deinterlace plugins available for VirtualDub. It won't be 24p, but it will end up being 30p and maybe that's close enough considering these plugins are all free.

John

mhbstevens wrote on 8/9/2004, 10:42 AM

Never done it myself but I read an article in a respected Video journal last week that said 24p was largely psychological and that 30p was just as good. The problems with the conversion are of course the reason they make 24p cameras.

If you are serious about producing a lot of quality 24p work you need a 24p camera, I think. This route is probably aboutt he same cost as getting pro software, so here is the excuse you always wanted to go out and buy that GL-2